


Gets Me Undone

by deathishauntedbyhumans



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Gay Panic, Head Injury, M/M, Pre-Canon, Pre-Slash, Wordcount: 1.000-3.000, in that julian panics bc he is very gay not that he’s figuring it out for the first time, the plot’s all over the place with this one lads
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 03:27:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28949637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathishauntedbyhumans/pseuds/deathishauntedbyhumans
Summary: Ten minutes of knowing the man and Julian already wanted to prostrate himself on the bed and offer himself up to him. Ridiculous!Or the one where Julian gets attacked in the woods before the events of the routes but after Lucio’s death and Muriel has to help him out.
Relationships: Julian Devorak/Muriel
Kudos: 26





	Gets Me Undone

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Mieka Pauley’s _Frigid_. It’s not necessarily a song that fits this fic but it IS a big Julian song for me! 
> 
> This has been a WIP for ages and ages and ages and _ages_.

Julian awakens in a strange house. No, a strange… hut. 

A fire blazes in the fireplace. A hulking figure is stooped down beside it. 

Panic flares up in Julian’s mind, immediately followed by the fearful, desperate thought of  _ I don’t know him. I don’t know where I am. _

“Who are you?” he demands. When he sits up, he can’t stop a groan as his head protests the sudden sharp movement. 

The hulking figure on the other side of the room freezes. His back is still to Julian, but even if they’d been facing each other, Julian is certain they’ve never met before. 

“I didn’t expect you to wake up,” the figure mutters, and if Julian weren’t so fucking concerned about how he’d ended up in a stranger’s hut —and a stranger’s  _ bed _ , from the feel of it— when the last thing he remembers is pushing his way desperately through the woods, he might’ve melted at the deep baritone that rumbles its way right through his bones. 

_ Focus. I’m focused.  _

“Were you the… the  _ thing _ in the woods?” Julian asks, holding his head up with one hand. He’s got the most  _ splitting  _ headache. “Did you try to kill me? Thought you could get at the infamous  _ Doctor Jules _ while he was on the down and out?”

Despite Julian’s wild accusations, the other man doesn’t seem any more or less tense than he’d been when Julian had first spoken. In fact, he lets out a huff that half-sounds like a laugh and half-sounds like a scoff, and finally rises, turning to face him. (And Julian had been right in his initial judgement— the guy is built like a fucking tree, with all the muscle mass of a bear and the disparaging scowl of Mazelinka when he’d broken her favourite pot as a child.) 

“You’re an idiot,” the large man says, his features set sullenly. Julian is… decidedly offended. Just who  _ is _ this large, bearish man, and why the hell does he think he has the right to talk like this to him?!

“Now listen here—“ Julian begins to say, but the man talks over him, easily shutting Julian back up again. 

“That  _ thing  _ in the woods was trying to kill you. I saved your life.” He crosses the room, ducking his head away from Julian once more. Against his better judgement, Julian immediately misses the view. “Against my better judgement,” the man adds in a mutter that Julian just barely catches, echoing his thoughts, albeit in a completely different context. 

“What was that?”

The large man shoots him an annoyed glare over his shoulder and doesn’t respond, leaving Julian to stare at the back at him with indignant annoyance etched over his features. 

“Who  _ are  _ you?” he repeats at last, giving up on his (righteous) anger. It won’t get him anywhere, and sitting and glaring at each other in the dim firelight of the hut is only going to keep Julian in the metaphorical dark. 

The man squints at him before abruptly turning his head away once more. “...Muriel,” is all he says in reply. 

Julian frowns. He’s sure he’s never seen this man before, could have sworn he’d never-before laid eyes upon Muriel’s stolid form, but the name echoes in his head and bounces around his skull, tugging at some half-formed memory that he can’t quite grasp. He absently rubs at his temple, wincing when his fingers fall upon a thick knot that he’s sure wasn’t there when he’d been stumbling around the forest before. 

“Muriel,” Julian repeats, and there it is again. That strange, building pressure in his skull that has nothing to do with his head injury. “What… Do you know what that  _ thing  _ was, then? That tried to kill me?”

Muriel takes a seat at the worn, wooden table across the room. “You don’t want to know.”

Indignantly, Julian crosses his arms, pain momentarily forgotten in his utter annoyance. “Excuse me? Yes, I  _ do  _ want to know! It tried to kill me! I think I have a right to know what things are when they’re trying to kill me out in these woods!” 

When something flashes in the light in Muriel’s hands, Julian feels his heart skip a beat at the sight of a knife glinting from in between the stranger’s large fingers. To his surprise, though, Muriel merely picks up a half-carved hunk of wood from the table in front of him and begins scraping at it carefully. “You shouldn’t exert yourself,” he replies, though he isn’t even looking at Julian when he says it. 

Right on cue, Julian’s head gives a particularly obnoxious stab of pain. “Muriel,” he says, dropping his forehead down against his hands and deciding then and there to change tactics, since his (righteous!) indignation is clearly getting him nowhere. “I— oh, gods. I’d really rather know what’s out there in the forest trying to chase me down than go back out there blind. Is there any way— oof, ouch, alright— is there any way you can tell me what’s out there?” He tries to look up in the middle of the sentence and then presses his palms against his eyes to try and quell the rising nausea that the movement awakens in his stomach. “Because I do have to get back to civilisation, eventually. As much as I appreciate you taking me in and keeping whatever it was from killing me, I don’t think it would do either of us much good to keep me here forever.” Unless that’s the man’s plan. Somehow, Julian highly doubts it, but the thought being kept here isn’t nearly as worrying as it should be. He blames the headache. 

“You can leave as soon as it’s light,” is all that Muriel mutters. Julian glances carefully to the window, finally registering the lateness of the hour. The darkness outside is absolute, much to Julian’s general discomfort. He isn’t certain of just how long he was unconscious for, but considering the fact that it had only been around noon when he’d started his trip into the forest… Well, it isn’t the best sign in the world. 

It’s  _ lucky  _ that he’d awoken at all, that’s for damn sure. 

“But that thing—“

Muriel makes a particularly vicious swipe against the wood in his hand. “He won’t come back again as long as you stay on the path.”

Julian frowns. “He?”

Regret flashes over Muriel’s face, followed by an annoyed resignation. It’s obvious that he hadn’t intended to give Julian any kind of hint, but now that it’s out, Julian isn’t about to let it go. 

“...yes. He.” Muriel’s grip on his knife tightens. “Go to sleep.”

“Who is  _ he?”  _ Julian asks. “You seem to know more about this… fellow, Muriel, and I hate to put you on the spot, but I feel like it’s pretty integral to my survival to understand—“

Muriel heaves a heavy sigh. “Stop asking questions you don’t want to know the answers to. Go to sleep.”

Julian squints at Muriel in the light of the fire, sizing him up. “What makes you think that I don’t want the answer.” 

Muriel doesn’t look at him, but he doesn’t respond, either. He merely sits there in his chair and continues carving his wood. 

“Oh, the silent treatment? That’s very mature, sir. My younger sister used to use that on me when we were children. Do you know what, though? I’m  _ excellent  _ at the silent treatment. In fact, I can give you the silent treatment in return! Ah— heh, I’ll start right now! I bet you don’t like that, do you?” Julian stares at him, waiting for a response, but when one isn’t immediately forthcoming, he lets out a huff of breath. “…Oh, come on, you can’t be silent forever. It doesn’t work like that. Muriel, you have to talk to me, come on—“

Muriel sets his knife down on the table with a loud clatter. “Do you know,” he says in a low voice that absolutely does  _ not  _ twist at Julian’s insides fiercely. “How utterly annoying you are?”

Julian gives a sheepish chuckle. “I’ve been told a few times. Once or twice.”

The amusement is short-lived as Muriel stands and slowly begins to advance on him. “That  _ thing  _ in the woods is Lucio… or at least, it’s what’s left of him. He lives out here, terrorises me and the chickens, and makes a mess when the protection charms that I’ve placed around the forest fail. I was renewing them today when I realised that some  _ idiot  _ had been attacked.” 

When Muriel finishes his rant, he is standing inches from Julian’s spot on his bed; it’s the closest he’s been to Julian so far, and his height is  _ dizzying.  _ At his own six foot something height, Julian is unused to feeling  _ small,  _ but the way that Muriel towers over him has him speechless in a way that he can’t quite explain. 

It takes him an embarrassing amount of time to catch up with Muriel’s explanation because of it. Julian spends much too long staring up at Muriel with his mouth open like a fish out of water. It’s a long enough pause that Muriel’s cheeks flush a warm, healthy red and he stumbles backwards a step, like he’s trying to put space between them again. 

On instinct, Julian reaches out and just barely grasps one of the furs hanging over Muriel’s shoulders, stopping him from moving away. 

“Lucio,” Julian says in a daze, ignoring the way Muriel frowns through his blush the best he can. “You’re telling me that  _ Lucio  _ attacked me out there? Lucio is  _ dead!”  _

Muriel glares at Julian’s hand like he wants nothing more than to bite it off. “No. He  _ was  _ dead,” he corrects roughly. “He’s trying to come back.”

“Fine,” Julian says without letting him go. “Say it really  _ was _ Lucio. Why would he attack me?”

“He attacks without a pattern,” Muriel replies, trying in vain to shrug Julian off of him. “Animals, trees… humans. Would you  _ let go  _ of me?”

Julian stares at him, considering, and then very carefully shakes his head. “...no.”

Muriel glares right at him. “Let go of me, Julian.”

And  _ hm.  _ That, that right there, Muriel saying his name in that rumbling baritone of a voice? That should absolutely not be as attractive as it is. Julian shivers against his will. Maybe it’s just the head injury speaking, but… Muriel has unfairly checked so many boxes that Julian hadn’t even been aware of before this point. 

“You won’t answer me anymore if I do,” Julian guesses, his voice hoarser than it had been only moments ago. Muriel’s glare deepens; Julian knows he’s right, even if Muriel won’t admit it aloud. While he’s in no condition to fight, Julian doesn’t really think that things are going to come to blows between them. Muriel obviously doesn’t want him dead. If he didn’t care at all, he would have left Julian in the forest for Lucio --Lucio! Of all things!-- to kill. 

Perhaps it isn’t just the head injury speaking, Julian muses to himself as one of Muriel’s large, calloused hands covers his own in an attempt to dislodge his fingers from his cloak. 

“I still don’t understand,” Julian presses on, doing his damndest to hold on despite Muriel’s best efforts to pry him away. “If that thing really is Lucio, why is he here? Why isn’t he at the palace where he died? Aren’t ghosts supposed to--” 

“He isn’t a ghost,” Muriel interrupts gruffly. 

Julian tries to adjust his grip without getting shaken off, and winds up half-holding onto Muriel’s hand instead of his cloak. “What the hell is he, then?” 

“You wouldn’t understand,” Muriel says, but his voice cracks in the middle in a strange way. Reflexively, Julian lets go of the fur completely to grab Muriel’s hand properly, and Muriel makes a strangled sound somewhere in the back of his throat and tries to rip his hand away like he’s been burned. He doesn’t get very far; despite Julian’s head injury, he’s got a damn strong grip and he knows it, and he’s well-prepared to use it to his advantage. “What are you  _ doing _ ?” 

What  _ is  _ he doing? Muriel is bigger than he is, gruffer than he is. He is most definitely not someone that Julian wants to take in a fight, especially not in the state that he is currently in. But he doesn’t want to  _ fight _ him. He wants… something else from Muriel, he realises in a rough flash of inspiration. 

Ten minutes of knowing the man and Julian already wanted to prostrate himself on the bed and offer himself up to him. Ridiculous! 

Julian lets go of Muriel’s hand all at once, and Muriel retreats halfway across the room before Julian can decide if it’s really the right thing to do. He looks… not disgusted, but not happy, either. When he rubs his hand while glaring at Julian, it seems like he’s not doing it consciously, because there isn’t any way that Julian hurt him with the grip that he’d had on his hand. 

“...Sorry,” Julian says. What had they been talking about, before Julian had gotten distracted by Muriel’s general countenance? 

...Right. Lucio. 

“So. He’s not a ghost,” he says, and Muriel blinks in confusion before his face settles back into its usual state of unsettled displeasure. “But he’s dead, or… he  _ was  _ dead, but he’s coming back now?” Julian waits for Muriel to give him some kind of sign that he has it right, but when nothing is forthcoming, he heaves a sigh. “You’ve gotta work with me here, Muriel.  _ Why _ is Lucio back?”

There’s a pause, a long one, long enough that Julian nearly breaks and asks the question again, just in case Muriel somehow hadn’t heard him. But then Muriel abruptly lets out a harsh breath and turns away. 

“I don’t know.”

“Come again?” 

“I don’t  _ know.”  _ Muriel sounds more bitter than a cup of Julian’s favourite dark-roast coffee. “I don’t know why he’s back. All I know is that he is.” He crosses his arms, and while Julian can’t see his face, he has the distinct impression that Muriel is  _ pouting.  _ “Are you happy now?”

The answer to that is a very pointed  _ no,  _ but Julian realises very abruptly that he doesn’t have any more fight left in him. His head twinges, reminding him rather unpleasantly that he’d suffered a likely concussion, or an injury akin to it, not too many hours ago. 

“Thank you,” he says instead, quietly. “I would rather know what I’m up against when I leave in the morning than not. I appreciate you sharing what you do know.” Even  _ if _ Julian had had to pry it out of him, piece by unwilling piece. 

Muriel lets out a sigh that might be annoyance and might be relief. “Like I said, you’ll be safe as long as you stay on the path. The protection charms have been renewed. He won’t be able to harm you again.”

“Thank you,” Julian repeats. Muriel doesn’t turn to look at him. Instead, he crosses back to his table and chair and retakes his seat, picking his knife and his hunk of wood up once more. 

“You should sleep,” he says gruffly, and this time, Julian doesn’t argue with him. He lays down carefully, mindful of the knot in his skull, and shuts his eyes. Within minutes, the soft scraping of Muriel’s knife against wood has him fading into an easy slumber. 

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos/comments are love! Come scream at me on tumblr @deathishauntedbyhumans.


End file.
